classic

Think hard before trading in a decent ice car for an ev. In my opinion pre touchscreen/lane assist etc etc ice cars are going to become very valuable and personally I’m getting back on that train before it’s too far out of my station. Unfortunately I’m in a position as a private owner where the ev car I bought 16 months ago now costs considerably more to operate so the numbers don’t add up anymore. Somehow, it seems due to Covid, Putin and The Tory Government my income is being outstripped by inflation and I found myself in the bizarre situation where I have no idea what my electricity, gas and mortgage are going to be in 6 months but right now I do know my Enyaq is worth the same as I paid for it. This is despite having 25k on the clock. In fact it is worth thousands more than I paid for it, but it’s trade price was actually £500 more, so accounting for interest on the pcp Ive run it for over a year and walked away for practically nothing. Things as they are I decided to cash out and will be back in a fossil/ice asap. When I got it, with cheap electricity and occasional free charging at work, there was about £100 a month cost to me over running my petrol octavia which was closing in on 100k miles, I was happy to pay this as a premium for having a nice car which had no tailpipe emissions. Now, charging on rapids costs as much as buying fuel. Charging at home was still ok for me but my fixed energy deal ends in May 23 and will multiply by an unknown factor. Fixed mortgage deal ends next year as well… My leisure trips to Cornwall, The Lakes, Peak District etc became as expensive as driving a petrol car. Add into that mix that the Enyaq absolutely devoured a set of tyres in 25k miles, and they are not cheap - absolute best price was £165 each fitted. I’ve never got less than 40k out of car tyres and 16” are £75 for a reasonable make. Personally I had 2 bad experiences with charging. One coming out of Manchester where I wasted an hour finding an operating or unblocked charger. Stooging around an unfamiliar city typing postcodes into the sat nav isn’t fun. Second one was the ev’s Achilles heel - family emergency. Jump in with 80%, fast run to a hospital 70 miles away, run about to and from railway stations picking up relatives and suddenly at a very stressful point you find yourself Googling rapid chargers to find there are only 2 within 10 miles. One is broken and the other one occupied by a leaf whose driver informed me that she was needing 30 minutes and I was lucky with my timing as she’d waited for 2 previous cars to charge ! The infrastructure isn’t there yet, its one thing planning a journey on your sofa with a cup of tea and working out where in an ev charger desert like Devon or Cornwall you can get a charge but on the hoof it is hard work (and the Enyaq sat nav which supposedly finds the nearest charger is no help). A couple of weeks later and the Enyaq is in for the much anticipated software update. Got chatting with sales, and an offer is made which I decide to sleep on. Picked the car up and the update isn’t an improvement, so decided there and then to sell it back. So it’s gone. There’s clearly a demand for them, hence the good price, but I don’t get BIK. Beat my record for lowest percentage on the hospital run though 😬

It is a thinking game, but not sure on the fun ! Think hard before making the move, my Enyaq has gone, sold back to dealer. I’ll update on my reasons later, just going to work now, but the environment will have to wait for my contribution to its survival.

If you manually reset the service reminder it resets to 9,400 mile intervals. Personally I think 12 months/10k miles oil and filter is right for these engines. Depending on your point of view, you could leave it 18,000 miles and reset the reminder next time it comes up or stick with fixed. You do need to plug it in to set as variable.

I think just the flashing glow plug light means a general fault has been detected. There is a separate dpf light for dpf issues. Who knows, maybe a good blast down the road would blow some cobwebs out of it but I would get it straight back to where you just bought it from.

I think it means there is an engine management system fault detected. It has probably also reduced engine power when the light is flashing. Could be many things from a sensor to egr or dpf faults, will need scanning for fault codes to find out.

Beats the heck out of me as well ! Presumably there is an easy way but I have been defeated trying to find it.

Your smart meter will tell them when you have charged an ev at home and you can then be taxed accordingly.

I haven’t got a reversing camera so can’t answer that point. I’m told the charge scheduler does work as advertised but I haven’t used it, and don’t have any locations set or ever touch it. I managed to get my Pod Point schedule to happily charge when I want by not having any settings on the car schedule and I’m sticking with the “ain’t broke so don’t fix it” theory.

All done and it isn’t an improvement. State of charge percentage on the display is the only noticeable better thing. New 12 volt battery fitted and presumably there are mods to battery management but overall I’m underwhelmed.

Or a tile on the menu…..

I watched that video and simply don’t recognise those levels of efficiency. I would like to see the actual route and speeds they used on that YouTube test, it has been fixed to show the EVs in a very positive light. Long term average of my Enyaq is 3.5 miles/kWh. A steady A and B road drive it might get 4.0 miles/kWh and the absolute best I’ve seen from it is 4.6 miles/kWh. When I had a tdi Octavia there were people on briskoda claiming to regularly average 70+mpg when I was getting around 50mpg in reality, then I had a 1.4tsi which averaged 40 to 45mpg at best, and I read about people with a VrS getting 50+mpg. Either I’m doing something wrong or I’m very unlucky that every car I get uses a lot of fuel/energy.

Looks like it could be an issue with Enyaqs then. If the alignment is within spec and it still knocks out the inner edges then it is a design fault.

Winter knocked my Enyaq by about 25%, might be slightly better after the much promised software update. From what I’ve read the Tesla battery management is better.

Sounds good. Clearly the whole software/user experience is better with Tesla. If you’re doing long journeys Tesla is better for the superchargers. Most of your “hates” would be better with an Enyaq - Matrix headlights and auto main beam system is good, auto wipers work well, and excellent turning circle. I’ve never been in a Tesla but personally I like the looks of the Model Y and the model 3.

Who knows ?! Anything could happen, but with inflation as it is, they aren’t going to get any cheaper whatever happens to supply and demand.

I could get a bit more range but I don’t skimp on speed, aircon or heating, I just drive it as I would if it was a petrol or diesel. The prices are a lot higher so £39k is probably what they can get for the ID4, so maybe it might not be such a bad option ? From what I can see, my car with 20k miles is still worth more or less what I paid for it.

Hi, I like mine - 21 reg 60 Suite. Comfortable, quiet, great to drive, 200 mile range in summer 150 winter, good size boot, and nice interior. They are basically the Skoda version of ID4 so I think you’d find it similar to drive. Personally I prefer the Skoda design particularly the interior. I’ve done over 20,000 miles in it and am hoping to keep it long term (10 years/200,000miles). No major issues, it has been back to the dealer once for an intermittent electric drive warning message and some other random warnings which was fixed by bleeding the cooling system and fitting a new airbag control module, no problems since then other than it looks like it has an appetite for tyres - definitely going to need all 4 changing around 25k miles. I’ve never had such a large heavy car so I guess that’s something expensive to get used to. Mine is an early car from Skoda stock, I’m still waiting for the software upgrade but I’m happy with the way it works on the old system. Hope that helps.

Thanks, probably a good idea to get it checked when new. Mine is definitely wearing the inside worse on the rear. I’m keeping a close eye on them and will get maximum mileage, have all 4 replaced and full wheel alignment done.

After 20,000 miles my Enyaq tyres are worn down to between 3 and 4mm but it is taking out the inside edges on all 4 corners. I rotated them front to rear as recommended in the manual at 10,000 miles and at that time the rears were about 1mm more worn than the fronts. Obviously it needs alignment checked and adjusting, but it’s probably going to get to 2mm all round at about 25,000 miles so although it is wearing the inner edges it won’t mean I’m replacing the tyres prematurely. The car came with 20” wheels and I am wondering if that might have some effect on the tyre wear as presumably the standard size is 19” and I guess the geometry is set up for that ? The top picture is the near side rear tyre at 20,000 ( now on the front) and the bottom picture is the offside front at 20,000 ( now on the rear). I check the pressures every month and increase them as per the spec if going on a journey with a loaded car.

Nice one, glad you got it sorted. The whole interface, menu etc had me scratching my head a few times until I got used to it. Car looks great by the way 👍

Parts being on back order has always been a problem with vag group cars, and I guess the microchip supply issues won’t be helping with something like a control module. With the grant and discount you secured on this deal then I see why you are holding out as the prices are way higher now, which is no doubt why the dealer would be quite happy if you walked away.

Did you pay and accept it in the end and, if so, have they provided you with a car to use in the meantime ? Personally unless Skoda and/or the dealer is looking after you, with free transport, I’d be seriously looking at rejecting it and walking away. That car is coming up one month old from first registration date and you haven’t been able to use it. If the part is back ordered I can’t see how the situation can be unblocked or progressed further.

As far as I have been able to work out, so far, the Enyaq doesn’t preheat the battery before leaving home. Preheating the interior whilst connected to your charger does at least save some battery power when you drive. However it does seem that the latest software edition may do some kind of preheating, all the information I’ve found so far is fairly vague about what it actually does. For it to do anything along the lines of preconditioning I think you will need to set a planned departure time.

It isn’t the dealerships fault, but they want to be a Skoda dealer and the issue is for them to sort with Skoda. It sounds like you are dealing with this very reasonably to me. I used to do pre delivery inspections on cars but 30 years ago when there was an absolute fraction of the electronics of today. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the same time allocated for a technician to PDI a car today. If the car doesn’t put up a warning light or fault message then all the systems are probably assumed to be ok. I would have thought they plug it into their diagnostic system to set it up and that would flag up any faults codes, but maybe they don’t.